Limited Resources: Gatecrash Draft #1

Only watched the draft so far but felt like I needed to say this before I forget about it, so here goes:

in pack 3 there was a pick where you were debating if you should take a smite or an Orzhov keyrune. Usualy I’d agree that smite is a bit better, but in your deck the keyrune is super important – not only because of the primordial that you mentioned but because your curve was so high on 5 drops. curving out with 2 drop, keyrune, five drop is much better than just 2 drop, 3 drop, another 3drop (you’ll probably not have a 4 drop since you are only running a couple of them). I think if there ever was a deck that wanted keyrune over smite, this just (s)might be it! (pardon the bad pan).

Seeing your first round and thinking about the subject more, I am even further convinced you should have taken keyrune. Your curve is high, which is rather anti synergetic with extort – an Orzhov deck with a high curve and two guildmages is on of the hungriest decks Iv’e ever seen as far as needing mana counts as hunger, and that means you can REALLY use that acceleration. And all of this is before even talking about the fact that the keyrune can, in times of need, become an excelent blocker. All around better than smite.

Also in the last game of the first round, when your opponent was on 7 life and you had obzedat in play, and he only has 1 card in hand, why not attack with everyone? you has something like 6 power on the board you were ignoring for no reason. I’m saying you could have killed him a turn earlier, which is in some cases relevent (for example, if he really did have a smite or whatever in his hand, than he kills your bomb and it still sitting on a comfortable 7 life, requiring you to topdeck 2 low drops in order to accumulate enough extort triggers to kill him, which buys him time to draw removal spells, bombs and win conditions).

just finished watching the draft and that deck looks pretty crazy. i did notice that u passed a few basilica screechers though and that kinda made me sad haha. judging from my experience so far, he might be the 2nd best mono-black common behind grisly spectacle. most ppl just see the 1/2 flying and let him slide but the extort adds up REALLY quickly

Extort is a funny thing. I dont agree with the previous poster, orzhonv get a lot of overcosted fairly poor creatures which make smite much more usefull than a keyrune. The turn three key into turn four edict is fine on turn three and four but on turn four and later the keyrun isnt that impressive. Its fine. Smite on turn three or four is good. Smite on turn six on their madcaped/encoded/bloodrushed beater with 2-4 extort going is fantastic!

Its also a 1-mana spell for more extorte goodness. Thats the thing in my opinion, the previous poster argued that your high curve waranted a keyrune. Id say your curve was to high period. A keyrune instead of a smite would actualy increas that curve.

It seems that extort is much better than I thought at the beginning. I really think that you should lead with as many cheap drops as you can muster to compensate for the mana it requires.

I didn’t do the math, but I guess the Thrull Parasite really was your second best creature in the game, dealing tons of damage. A 1/1 extort is really not to be sneezed at. Good job at successfully testing this!

I like keyrune as well in this particular deck although 9 out of 10 times the pick is smite. I have found smite to be only ok. You often need to kill an unblockable guy or don’t have a blocker or you’re racing and not keeping guys back. Smite Is a situational 1 for 1 so I would be careful about over overvaluing it. I ussually only want 1 in my decks. A creature that can trade is ussually better I think.

I also like the 3rd edict over the first siege mastadon. I disagree that 3 is too many. Its just that its important to not run too many fives but if you’re going to have a bunch of 5 drops in your deck they might as well be premium ones like edict instead of mediocre ones like mastadon.

Thanks for the vid!
I just finished watching the first match, and I think you played the last turn suboptimally. You were obviously going to win almost certainly no matter how you play, but this line leaves you open to smite into something ridiculous like prophetic prism into merciless eviction.
It is noteworthy that you just had lethal through smite by attacking with everything and lifelinking an unblocked creature, but this leaves you weak to eatherize.
I think the safest line was to activate the guildmage twice in your upkeep to deal 6 with the come into play trigger of Obzedat, putting him to 5. Then just don’t attack and exile obzedat eot. I dont think there is a sequence of plays that gets him out of that. (I guess rapid hybridization into prism into eviction, but even if he has that this play is still better than the one you made)
I do realize that this isn’t really relevant since you win that game over 99% of the times anyway, the point of this post was optimization for fun.

Hey Marshal! Just wanted to let you know that seeing this post made me genuinely happy (I haven’t even watched it yet). As a 37-year old father who last played paper magic in the 90′s I guess this is kind of odd, but that’s the kind of oddities the internet brings us.

I hope you will be a proliferate broadcaster of the GTC and coming formats of draft magic. I very much enjoy your commentary.

Regards from a snowy Sweden.
PS. Being clueless I prefer whatever is the latest set over Cube and other stuff that makes my head hurt, if you care to know.

Its very Ironic that you never cast your luminate primordial. Besides, in orzhov even with that kind of spell, if you have no keyrunes for acceleration, you shouldn’t be playing seven drops, as we saw. You want as many cheap creatures as possible, which is why kingpin;s pet is one of the best commons in the set. You should try to play as many 2 and 3 drops as you can, to get better extort triggers. Overall a good draft, but you prioritized a few cards that were not the best pick. You did have a good deck givn you saw so much other black, and the one guy with like 10 bats.

Seeing it a couple times here, Smite when you don’t have one yet in an Orzhov deck is the right pick over keyrune. Keyrune typically ends as a do nothing turn three. Against many decks that means you’re dead and you likely should have played another Basilica or even Corpse Blockade in that slot.

I really liked the draft and M2G3. I think it highlights how wizards promotional articles can often lead us astray. Everybody went big with Orzhov at first because the term getting thrown around was ‘grinding’, which makes us think ‘late game’. I’m guessing you would draft this way differently now. M2G3 shows the same thing in the penultimate turn, overvaluing obzedat because of all the hype, when in reality, you could bash, he trades 2 guys, you go to 18 and he goes to 1, then you have the win with double guildmage activation next turn. If he removes the guildmage during his turn while you’re tapped out he loses to millenial gargoyle extort instead, since he can’t keep his extort on the table AND kill obzedat. I doubt he had outs either way but I don’t see that you gained more value by going to 5 on the slowroll, since it really doesn’t matter what he has when he’s at 1 vs 18 looking at guildmage, extort, and 6 mana. I’m probably missing something but I definitely would have bashed.

Limited Resources
Limited Resources podcast co-host Marshall Sutcliffe provides coverage on North American Magic events and writes for DailyMTG. He educates listeners about limited and heads the highest-prizing clan on MTGO.

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